[Tony] Romo’s 2013 contract extension, with a $25 million bonus prorated over the life of the deal, was negotiated knowing there would be future cap consequences. At that time, we could only hope that the Cowboys would not revisit it for several years, allowing the future stacked proration to settle down as the contract went.

So much for that.

Less than a year after signing that deal, the Cowboys converted $12.5 million of Romo’s 2014 salary into a prorated signing bonus to push out future cap charges. Now, a year after that restructure, the Cowboys have done it again, converting $16 million of Romo’s 2015 salary into another prorated signing bonus, adding another $12.8 million to the already stacked amounts of proration in the coming years. Romo now carries the highest amount of potential dead money—cap charges that will remain if Romo and the Cowboys part ways—of any player in NFL history. Though the possibility is remote, the amount of dead money acceleration would be $46 million if the Cowboys and Romo were to somehow part this year. That amount reduces to $32 million next year and $19.6 million in 2017, making Romo, for all intents and purposes, uncuttable and untradeable until then.

Speaking with the Inquirer’s Jeff McLane at the start of the Bills’ offseason training program, McCoy offered his take on why he is starting anew in Buffalo rather than returning to Philadelphia for a seventh season.

“I don’t think he likes or respects the stars. I’m being honest,” he said. “I think he likes the fact that it’s ‘Chip Kelly and the Eagles.’

Malcolm Jenkins stopped by the NFL Network on Wednesday morning to offer his thoughts on the wild offseason the Eagles have experienced so far. He claimed the players in the locker room were not surprised by the trading of LeSean McCoy, but rather what they got in return for him.

“When you talk about what you can get for — if you are looking to acquire more talent — I just think Shady’s cap number and what we were able to get in return for Shady, I think made sense,” Jenkins said. “And some guys in the locker room who kind of know what’s going on weren’t surprised by it.

“In the locker room a lot of guys weren’t surprised by the trade, what we were more surprised of was that it was just a player-for-player trade. I think everybody thought we would have gotten more — Kiko [Alonso], plus a couple draft picks, you know, somebody else.” Read more »

PHOENIX, Ariz. — On March 3, Buffalo Bills coaches, personnel people and owners were sitting in a room together going over their plans for the upcoming free agency period.

That’s when GM Doug Whaley’s phone rang.

“We’re sitting around making our plans for free agency, what our team looks like, what we want it to look like, and all of a sudden we get this call from Philadelphia,” said Bills coach Rex Ryan. “And I think that was when the trade started. Probably 30 minutes later, the trade was done.

“We never saw it [coming]. It was an opportunity, that’s it.” Read more »

In the days after the Eagles traded him, LeSean McCoy kept an eye on what his former team was doing to fill its hole at the running back spot.

After Frank Gore backed out of his deal, the Birds added both DeMarco Murray and Ryan Mathews to the mix. Chip Kelly said afterwards that the Eagles were able to essentially get two running backs for the price of one (McCoy). But looking at the numbers closely, that’s not really the case. Murray’s deal for the next three years is almost identical to the one McCoy had with the Eagles.

The only differences are Murray gets $18 million guaranteed, and none of McCoy’s contract was guaranteed. McCoy also had a higher cap number for 2015.

Here is what the national media are saying about the Eagles this week.

ESPN draft analyst Mel Kiper Jr. redrafted the 2009 class, moving former Eagles running back and second-round pick LeSean McCoy all the way up to the Kansas City Chiefs at No. 3:

I’m breaking my rules on positional value in having McCoy so high, but whom would you put ahead of him here? He leads the draft class in rushing yards with 6,792, and he’s not exactly washed up, as he hasn’t missed a game in either of the past two seasons, and won’t even turn 27 until July. A 10,000-yard career wouldn’t be a surprise.

When the Eagles dealt LeSean McCoy to the Bills for Kiko Alonso, they determined their best approach to replace his production was to add multiple ball-carriers. The names at the top of their list? Frank Gore, DeMarco Murray and Ryan Matthews.

“We obviously lost a tremendous running back in LeSean,” Kelly said Thursday at the NovaCare Complex. “So how do you replace that productivity? What’s available out there? And obviously we thought the three best guys were Frank and DeMarco and Ryan. And we wanted to target two of them. And we ended up with two of them.

“Did we have a master plan that it was always gonna work out like this? No, but we went into it with an idea that if we lose LeSean, we better get two guys.” Read more »